The Munsell Student Color Set

[Steven Sweeney]

That there is more than one way to skin the color wheel cat is demonstrated by my printer, which produces gorgeous photo-quality images across the spectrum, not with blue, yellow and red inks, but cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow and black. That so-called CMYK model is yet just one model, particularly suited to printing technologies. But like first hearing that the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh predates biblical accounts, it

[Richard Bingham]

[QUOTE=Steven Sweeney] . . . the

[Richard Monro]

The problem I have always had with published color wheels is that they are theoretical and do not reflect true artist colors. I have found a true color wheel that finally is helpful to those of us who practice fine art. The real color wheel be found at:

http://realcolorwheel.com/colorwheel.htm.

[Steven Sweeney]

Another helpful introduction to Munsell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system
The cylindrical model, with its chroma, value and hue coordinates, is especially useful in visualizing how the system is constructed.

And again, this reference is particularly well annotated, for further investigation.

[Steven Sweeney]

All that being said, don't everybody go leaping off of precipices, over this system that is second nature to some and unknown to many.

When I'm indoors, it's a modified Paxton palette, but when the French easel goes out to the river bluff country next weekend, it will be stocked with a warm and cool version of blue, yellow, and red, with enough premixed grays to manipulate the chroma in any value range. A lot of white, a half-dozen brushes. Light, effective, harmonious -- and fun.

Notwithstanding the famous book title -- "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green" -- they do. Don't throw away what's working for you, for the kind of painting that you do.

But remain open to any of the myriad tips and tricks available through other approaches. Steal the best of them, and make your mark.

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Well said Steven! Thanks for the additional info and links guys!

[Allan Rahbek]

[QUOTE=Marvin Mattelson]Allan,

Red and green are not true optical compliments. Close but no cigar. Using the principles of simultaneous contrast, if you place, for example, a red card against a white field the eye tries to balance out the color red with it's optical compliment. If the red card is removed there will be a blue green after image.

The Munsell color wheel is based on optical compliments: yellow-green and purple, blue-green and red, yellow-red and blue, red purple and green, and blue-purple and yell

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Ah, Allan.... I see you are doing what I am doing. Mixing colors! Thanks for showing these samples.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Alan, if it works for you then that's all the validation you need.

It didn't work for me when I first struggled with painting theory and how to manifest it into practical technical terms. This was about 30 years ago. I was painting (or at least trying to paint) in acrylics when I discovered a new line of paint, Liquitex Modular Acrylics, based on the Munsell Color Notation System.

Somehow it all made logical sense to me because the tubes were identified by general hue names (red, blue, etc.) and values, as opposed to traditional packaging (Ulramarine) nomenclature. They also manufactured a set of neutral grays, to be used for reducing chroma.

The Munsell color wheel made sense. The logic of the relationships was so clear and gave me a big leg up. I could base my decisions on logic and not recipes. Within two years I was painting covers for Time Magazine and doing advertising campaigns for clients like IBM. I've tried to spread the word ever since.

Years later, I started to study the teachings of Frank Reilly with John Murray. Reilly based much of his methodology on his adaptation of Munsell, so it seemed a logical step in my evolution. This has, in turn, opened my eyes further and given me the foundation to develop my own ideas.

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Here is an interesting experiment. I am in the midst of painting a little canary study to test how to keep the chroma of my Cad Yellow, while darkening the values.

Supplies: M. Graham cadmium Yellow
M. Graham Dioxazine Purple
and Micheal Harding Yellow Ochre

Mixing the Cad. Yellow with it's compliment produced a hue and major value shift and I ended up with a muddy looking yellow-green

Mixing the Cad Yellow with a earth color - Yellow Ochre retained the chroma and gave me nice value shifts

I also found out that Yellow already is a high chroma color and lightening it would only kill the intensity of this color. So I made this my highest value and am working the other direction, progressively getting darker. Since this a portrait artist forum, I don't think Canaries are welcome, but I will post the results as soon as the little guy is finished. Sorry about the enthusiasm, but I am just tickled pink to finally have the answer to my Chroma question!